Re: Global heating and stupid greens

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

See also:

Jim Muckerheide wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know if the Japanese work on extracting U from seawater is still
> active? and the current cost estimate of such recovery?  I thought it had been
> only about 10 times mined U prices back before the prices dropped.
<snip>
> Regards, Jim
> ============

[Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion]

Mineral Extraction

Not yet exploited to its full potential is the opportunity OTEC could provide
to mine ocean water for its 57 elements dissolved in solution. In the past,
most economic analyses showed that mining the ocean for trace elements
dissolved in solution would be unprofitable because so much energy is required
to pump the large volume of water needed and because it is so expensive to
separate the minerals from seawater. However, because OTEC plants will already
be pumping the water economically, the only problem to solve is the cost of
the extraction process. The Japanese recently began investigating the concept
of combining the extraction of uranium dissolved in seawater with wave-energy
technology. They found that developments in other technologies (especially
materials sciences) were improving the viability of mineral extraction
processes that employ ocean energy.
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